On February 19, 2024, Ms. Supamas Isarabhakdi, Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation said that it is astonishing that Bureau of Laboratory Accreditation, Department of Science Service (BLA-DSS) has been recognized as an accreditation body of the country according to International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation Mutual Recognition Arrangement (ILAC MRA). In this regard, BLA ranked 5^th in the world for Competence of Proficiency Testing Providers according to ISO/IEC 17043 (as of 2024).

          Ms. Supamas Isarabhakdi, Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation also added that continuous improvement of Proficiency Testing Providers supports the Advance science-research-innovation policy setting out by the Ministry, fulfilling the needs of people and community and strive for changes made for sustainability development. This seeks to enhance potential of and prepare personnel to be ready for competition in a real-world marketplace in a sustainable manner. This supports an export of Thailand goods and minimizing a concern and risks arising from unsafe product for customers, meaning that people’ life quality are promoted and the confidence of laboratory’s quality assurance is established in terms of testing, calibration and inspection. These also encourage the development of competence in science, research and innovation in Thailand as external quality assurance has been widely recognized at an international level and ensure validity of result of private and public bodies who further applied testing results into their daily operations, enable private and legal sectors to gain confidence as information important for their decision-making process.

          Furthermore, Dr. Rungrueng Kitphati, General Director, Department of Science Service (DSS), added that external quality assessment (EQA) or Proficiency Testing (PT) are important processes of laboratory accreditation according to given international standards. That laboratories according to DSS are required laboratory accreditation for establishing its quality assurance, ensuring quality of system and personnel and surveillance and monitoring sytems of testing results. This indicates continuous improvement of laboratories, ensuring validity of results, provision of evidence-based information according to given international standards and enhance services and products’ safety for customers (e.g., public and private sectors). Taken together, DSS moves forward for testing laboratory development as it is seen as a cornerstone of sustainable national development in an domain of economy, society and health and wellbeing.